A University of Windsor professor is among an international team of scientists examining what challenges and opportunities the future may hold for invasive species research.

Professor Hugh MacIsaac travelled to the University of Cambridge last fall along with 16 other ecologists to reach a consensus on what they believed to be the emerging trends, issues, opportunities and threats for invasive science.

Each scientist had previously submitted at least two topics which were then discussed and confidentially scored from one to 1,000.

“When we did that, there was a clear cutoff in the perceived importance of the topics at 14,” the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research biology professor said. “We then considered those 14 in more detail and examined how they are going to affect humans and wildlife over the coming 10 to 20 years.”

Those 14 topics were recently explored in the paper Invasion Science: A Horizon Scan of Emerging Challenges and Opportunities published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

Dr. MacIsaac’s two proposed topics ended up receiving the highest overall rankings among the group.

His first topic examined the use of biotechnology and gene-editing tools as a way of controlling invasive species.

“Historically, if we had a problem with an invasive species in a lake we would either try to net the fish, fish them out, or use whatever means you had available,” MacIsaac explained. “We now have gene-editing technologies that allow us to interfere in either a positive way or negative way with their reproductive cycles.”

To see an example of this in action, MacIsaac said you only have to look south to Florida where scientists recently introduced males of a genetically modified invasive mosquito that were already present in Florida to help combat the spread of Zika, Dengue and Chikungunya viruses to humans.

“The males that carry this additive gene will mate with the wild females and their offspring will eventually die before they ever reach maturity,” MacIsaac said, adding that the scientists conducting this trial claim a potential for a 90 per cent reduction in the mosquito population.

“If you’re reducing mosquito populations by 90 per cent then you’re also reducing the likelihood that humans are going to be bitten by these mosquitos.”

But MacIsaac said the gene editing is not without controversy. He said some argue that there may be unintended consequences to releasing a genetically modified mosquito into the natural environment.

“The push to use genetically modified agents to control invasive species will continue to grow,” he said. “And with it will come public opposition and the view that we are opening Pandora’s Box.”

MacIsaac’s second topic explored the importance of genetics and epigenetics.

“Most people perceive evolution as occurring through slight genetic changes,” MacIsaac said. “However, there’s another mechanism called epigenetics in which the performance of an organism changes depending on the conditions in which they live.”

An example of this can be found when organisms produce a family of proteins after they have been exposed to stressful conditions like heat, cold and UV light.

“I could take an organism and grow it at one temperature and it performs a certain way and if I take the same species and grow it at a different temperature its performance changes dramatically,” MacIsaac said of the heat shock proteins.

“That means if I take a species from one part of the world and introduce it to a number of locations, that species essentially evolves by altering its transcription of genes.”

He said this becomes an issue when examined through the lens of climate change.

An invasive species may be present in an environment but have little impact until the temperature increases and the heat shock proteins are produced.

“You may see that these animals or plants suddenly become invasive where they weren’t in the past,” MacIsaac said, adding that little is understood about the balance of genetics and epigenetics in overall performance of invasive species.

Other topics examined in the paper include the globalization of the Arctic, the spread of invasive microbial pathogens and invasive species denialism. The paper is currently available to read online and will officially be published this June.

Margaret Atwood will read from and sign her works during an appearance on the UWindsor campus Thursday, May 11.

Atwood is the author of over 60 books — novels, short stories, poetry and nonfiction —  including the best-selling novels The Handmaid’s Tale (now a major TV series from streaming service Hulu, televised in Canada on the Bravo channel) and Oryx and Crake.

Her most recent books are the novel Hag-Seed, a retelling of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and two volumes of the graphic novel Angel Catbird, a superhero comic which addresses the problem of cats killing birds.

She will perform a brief reading and then answer questions from the audience before signing books during the event, hosted by the Campus Bookstore. It begins at noon in room 1101, Education Building.

The bookstore will have copies of all Atwood’s books in print available for purchase.

“We are so delighted to be able to host a true giant of Canadian literature,” says marketing co-ordinator Martin Deck. “Atwood has been important to our culture for decades, and her works continue to find new relevance and new audiences.”

Forty years after leaving campus as new graduates, civil engineering classmates of 1977 returned to the University of Windsor to reunite and reflect on where it all began.

“It’s just touching to have that connection again,” said UWindsor alumnus Stan Taylor, who organized the get-together.

Taylor, Max Fantuz, Paul Eyraud, Ray Chevalier, Dan Piescic, Spyros Govas and Brian Boyle met with handshakes and embraces at the Ed Lumley Centre for Engineering Innovation (CEI) on April 22. During a tour of the CEI led by current faculty of civil and environmental engineering, the group of mostly retirees was pleasantly surprised to find Murray Temple and Jatinder Bewtra, two of their former professors, waiting for them in one of the labs.

“It makes us feel very happy to hear that they’ve had a good professional life,” said Dr. Bewtra, 82, who still works with engineering graduate students on campus. “That’s all we want to achieve.”

Taylor credited his 36-and-a-half-year career at the Essex Region Conservation Authority (ERCA) to a professor who recommended him for a summer job following graduation. Throughout his ERCA career, Taylor has worked in flood control, shoreline management, water quality and land use planning.

“It’s really thanks to the university that I got a foot in the door with my career,” he said.

Taylor recalls spending most of his time as a student in Vanier Hall and Essex Hall — the former engineering building.

“This facility is just so very impressive,” he said, after touring CEI. “The structures lab and hydraulics lab, for example, are just on a whole different scale in terms of size and the type of equipment. Our classrooms were pretty modest by comparison.”

Taylor said the day wouldn’t have been the same without the surprise visit from their professors: “To me that’s the highlight — seeing our old professors. It’s important to maintain these connections.”

See an album of images from the event on the UWindsor engineering Facebook page.

A reception at the One Ten Park studio on May 1 will highlight a collaboration between philosophy professor Jeff Noonan and Windsor photographer Doug MacLellan.

The Stories to the Streets project created posters pairing MacLellan’s images with text by Dr. Noonan — they will appear at random locations around the city during the month of May.

“The poster continues to be the quintessential mode of public communication and a vital part of an urban aesthetic,” Noonan says. “Even in today’s wired world, meetings, concerts, events of all sorts are announced, cost free to the readers, through posters.”

He and MacLellan will lead a discussion of their project and readings of the stories during Monday’s event, 7:30 to 9 p.m. at 110 Park Street West.

The studio is also exhibiting an installation by arts professor emerita Susan Gold Smith and alumni Collette Broeders (BFA 2009) and Mark Gasparovic (BFA 2015), entitled “You got me singing.”

The May Day after party will open the 2017 MayWorks festival, billed as a celebration of labour, arts and community, with activities running through the month. The festival’s sponsors include the Windsor University Faculty Association and Local 1393 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents campus trades, technical and professional staff.

Monday, May 1, is the RSVP deadline for the 2017 Clark Awards banquet.

The event, Wednesday, May 17, in the CAW Student Centre’s Ambassador Auditorium, will honour community partnerships with 18 local agencies that offer placement experiences for UWindsor students. Find a full list of the recipient organizations here.

The awards are named in memory of the late Charles J. Clark, former Chancellor of the University of Windsor and recognize friends of the University who have made significant commitments in time, energy and expertise to increase its profile and reputation.

Tickets to the May 17 dinner are $75, available through special events manager Mary-Ann Rennie at mrennie@uwindsor.ca or 519-973-7059.

Maintenance of Information Technology systems will result in outages to some services in the early-morning hours from April 27 to May 5. IT Services selected this period because it is a time of reduced student activity and reduces the impact of service outages.

IT Services will use daily service windows to perform deferred maintenance and make required system configuration changes. The maintenance activities and affected systems will be announced via the IT Services HotNews feed — and, if needed, targeted e-mails to affected parties. All services will be fully available each day by 8 a.m.

Critical or broad-reaching system changes are scheduled for the regular Thursday maintenance windows, while minor and less disruptive changes will occur Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Anyone who has a special event scheduled during this break requiring the affected services to be operational before 8 a.m. must contact the ServiceDesk at 519-253-3000, ext. 4440, so that IT Services can conduct maintenance activity around the event.

One of the organizers of last weekend’s March for Science will deliver a keynote address at a dinner Friday, April 28, to benefit Canada South Science City.

UWindsor physics professor emeritus Bill Baylis, president of the science and technology centre’s board, welcomes guest speaker Kathleen Walsh, interim executive director of Evidence for Democracy and a principal organizer of the event in Ottawa.

“We had a good crowd at the river for Windsor’s march on Saturday,” he says. “I saw many familiar faces — faculty colleagues, students and former students and their families. Kathleen’s talk, entitled ‘Science as a Way of Thinking,’ will make a perfect follow-up to that success.”

Science City has been on hiatus since 2016, when it moved out of its previous location on Marion Avenue. Its educational attractions and displays are now housed in the museum’s future home, the former Forster Secondary School building.

Dr. Baylis says volunteers have been raising funds and organizing in preparation for the centre’s re-opening. Friday’s dinner will help to support that work.

It begins at 6 p.m. at the St. Clair College Centre for the Arts, 201 Riverside Drive West. Tickets are $50 for adults and $30 for children aged 5 to 12 and are available online at windsor.snapd.com.